Chapter 31
Brendon
My fingers are still wrapped around his, clinging to stupid childhood symbolism, when he exhales, and lets our hands fall back to his chest. His heart is still hammering under my palms when he tilts his head toward the kitchen.
“Come on,” he says, voice low. “I said I’m feeding you. You look like you haven’t eaten since the Crusades.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitches. “That’s dramatic,” I mutter.
“You’re dramatic,” he shoots back. “You show up, kneeling in my living room like some sacrificial lamb. Shut up and let me feed you.”
Normally, I’d argue—or at least pretend to. Tonight, I just feel… empty; tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. My legs are still a little numb from kneeling, my head is spinning from the adrenaline dump, and there’s a hollow ache behind my ribs where all the hurt has been sitting.
“Okay,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t seem to expect that. His hands slide from my wrists to my waist, fingers pressing in, and I think he’s just going to steer me toward the kitchen.
Then, without warning, he bends and lifts.
My body moves with his, arms automatically going around his neck as he picks me up. My feet leave the floor, my stomach dips in that brief, weightless second, and I’m settled against his chest—one arm under my knees, the other around my back, like I weigh nothing.
“You know the drill,” he says, eyes warm in a way that hurts. “I carry what’s mine.”
There should be a part of me that brats at that and tells him I’m not luggage.
It’s there, but it’s buried under the louder part of me that just melts.
I tuck my face into the side of his neck instead of replying, breathing in the mix of soap, copper, and that maddening cologne I love so much.
Not all of the night’s been washed off him yet, and I try not to think about that.
The soft, amber light of the kitchen flips on, warming the small space. Dom sets me on the edge of the counter, hands lingering a second longer at my hips to make sure I’m steady.
“Stay,” he tells me, like I’m Jericho. “I’m serious. Don’t pass out, or wander off, or start cleaning my cabinets or some shit.”
I snort, the sound cracked around the edges. “I’m not that bad.”
“You alphabetized my spices once,” he reminds me, turning to the sink and rolling his sleeves up. “In Russian.”
“You only have five spices,” I mutter. “It took two minutes with a translator.”
“That’s not the point,” he says, but there’s no bite in it.
He turns on the tap and starts scrubbing his hands; really scrubbing.
I watch his shoulders tense as he works the soap into his skin, fingers digging into his palms, wrists, forearms. He doesn’t look at me while he works, his jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the sink, but even after the water runs clear again, he keeps going.
“Dom,” I finally say, quietly. “They’re clean.”
“Yeah,” he says, but he still rinses a few seconds longer before shutting the tap off. He grabs the dish towel, dries his hands briskly, then tosses it aside and heads for the fridge without turning around.
There’s a container on the middle shelf with cling film over it; He pulls it out, peels the wrap back, sniffs it, and nods, satisfied.
“Stir-fry,” he says. “From lunch. Don’t give me that face.”
“I didn’t say anything,” I protest.
“You thought it,” he says, shooting me a sideways look as he dumps the food into a pan and turns the gas on. “I heard the tiny judgment bells going off in your Christian brain.”
Despite myself, my lips curve. “Those bells retired when I stopped praying for you to explode,” I say.
“You stopped praying for me,” he echoes, reaching for a wooden spoon. “That’s tragic. I liked being a special request.”
I swallow, throat tight. “I started again this week,” I admit quietly.
He pauses for a moment, wooden spoon hovering over the pan, then nods once, like that’s a data point he’s storing away for later. Vegetables and meat sizzle, the smell beginning to fill the kitchen, and my stomach chooses that moment to remind me it exists with a low, embarrassing growl.
He glances over his shoulder, smirking. “Somebody’s hungry.”
“Shut up,” I say, heat creeping up my neck.
“Never,” he says back. “You being hungry is one of my favorite things. Means I get to fill you up.”
I groan. “Can you go five minutes without turning everything into filth?”
“No,” he says cheerfully. “Eat your food, and maybe later we can arrange a part two.”
“Dominic,” I warn, but the sound is weak, and my cheeks are definitely on fire now.
He chuckles under his breath and focuses on the pan, stirring it a few more times before turning the heat off. He grabs a plate from the cupboard, piles stir-fry on it, and then, instead of putting it on the table, he walks back over to me.
I reach for it automatically. “I can—”
He shakes his head, shifting it out of my grasp. “I said I was feeding you. Hands in your lap, Little Sin.”
My stupid body obeys faster than my brain, fingers curling into my own jeans as my palms press against my thighs. He sets the plate down on the counter beside me, grabs a fork, and then steps into my space until he’s standing between my knees.
“Open,” he says softly.
My throat tightens. “Dom—”
“Brendon,” he says, voice dropping, eyes locked on mine. “You showed up at my house broken. You knelt on my floor. I know you haven’t eaten, because you look like you’re about to pass out. Let me take care of you. Just… let me, okay?”
The fork hovers in front of my mouth, steaming vegetables skewered on the tines. His eyes are so serious that I feel the last bit of resistance drain out of me.
I open.
He feeds me a bite, watching my face closely, like he expects me to spit it out or have some dramatic revelation mid-chew. It’s just stir-fry: chicken, peppers, onions, and a garlic-soy sauce. It’s good—or maybe I’m just starving. I make a small sound of surprise anyway.
“See,” he says, the corner of his mouth lifting. “I’m not completely useless in the kitchen.”
“It’s… good,” I admit, once I swallow. “Really good.”
He looks unreasonably pleased with himself. “Of course it is,” he says with a wink, then lifts the fork again. “More. Then you’re gonna tell me how the hell you got here.”
I can’t help but giggle. “My car is parked around back again. I didn’t want you to see it,” I say, watching the humor shine in his blue eyes. “Oh, and you never asked for your spare key back, so…”
He shakes his head and holds the fork out again.
We fall into a rhythm; he feeds me slowly, making sure I actually swallow and breathe between bites, not just inhale the whole plate and choke.
The food warms me from the inside out, settling in the hollow pit where anxiety has been gnawing all week; my head feels less floaty, and my hands finally loosen in my lap.
He starts talking under his breath, not in English—in Russian.
The words flow together in that rough, rolling way that always makes me shiver a little.
I have no idea what he’s saying, but the way he says it makes my stomach flip, and my face heat.
I catch the same sounds I’ve heard before, when he’s half asleep and muttering into my neck, or when he’s really wound up and slips.
“What are you saying?” I ask quietly, more to fill the space than because I expect an answer.
He glances at me, mouth crooking a little. “Trade secret,” he says. “Food first, translations later.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how languages work,” I mutter, but I don’t push. Some part of me likes not knowing. It feels private, like he’s wrapping the silence in something only he understands, and letting me sit inside it.
When the plate is scraped mostly clean, the tight ball in my chest has loosened enough that I can now breathe without it hurting. The carb rush makes my limbs feel heavy in a good way—the way they get after a long day, when you finally sit down.
He wipes a stray bit of sauce from the corner of my mouth with his thumb, then licks it off without thinking; familiar heat curls in my stomach at the casual intimacy of it.
“Good boy,” he says, squeezing my thigh.
My cheeks go hot again. “Don’t,” I mutter, because those words always make my insides go gooey.
He smirks, entirely aware. “What, you don’t like being praised?” he asks innocently. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“I hate you,” I say, which we both know is a lie.
“Sure you do,” he says easily. “Drink.”
Dom hands me a glass of water; I take it, fingers brushing his, and drink greedily. Half the glass is gone before I come up for air. He watches, eyes soft, then takes it back and sets it aside.
“Better?” he asks.
“A little,” I admit. “Still want to die—just with more energy.”
He snorts, then mutters, “Dramatic,” and sets the pan and fork in the sink. “Come on. Couch time.”
I hop down from the counter and my legs wobble a little, but I stay upright. He eyes me, clearly debating whether to pick me up again, then apparently decides I won’t faceplant on the way to the sofa. He walks beside me anyway, hand at my lower back; a solid warmth guiding me through his space.
The living room feels different now than it did when I walked in an hour ago. Less like a stage for a breakdown, and more like… a place we live in. There’s still a faint metallic tang under the usual scent of his house—ghosts of whatever he washed off himself.
He sits first, dropping onto the couch with a soft grunt, then looks up at me expectantly.
The fear that he’ll pull away again is still a raw wound.
I’m afraid that if I give him even a second of space, he’ll use it to put distance between us; reconstruct walls he just let me see past. So, instead of perching at the other end of the sofa like a polite guest, I climb straight into his lap.